Never Cross A Time Lord (or Those He Cares For)
by Nehszriah
Summary: Something's bothering Clara and she won't say what, which causes the Doctor to worry. [fluff]


A/N: This came from a tumblr prompt where someone wanted a fic with protective!Twelve. It's a bit of a weird thing to think about at first, since Clara is very capable of handling things herself, but then you step back and think and go "yeah, he'd fricking level the universe if that's what it took". (This was also written between Face the Raven and Heaven Sent, so yeah.)

* * *

Never Cross A Time Lord (or Those He Cares For)

He started getting suspicious when Clara walked into the TARDIS one day looking incredibly distracted. It wasn't ' _I've got a lot of marking to do_ ' distracted or _'Getting in my five minutes_ ' distracted or even ' _Gran's ill and her immune system isn't what it used to be_ ' distracted. He knew the sort of emotions that were nothing, or were on the list of okay things to distract her from, but this one… this was different.

"What's the matter?" he asked from up on the observation deck. She began pressing buttons and checking monitors on the viewscreens, completely ignoring him. "Clara…?"

"Yes?"

"Are you alright? You don't seem yourself."

"Now when can you tell a thing like that, you daft old thing?" she chuckled, glancing up at him playfully. She was hiding something—he knew it.

"Just checking; making sure I've got this whole 'emotions' thing down. Needs some more work, apparently," he lied. Clara was not a pudding brain—she either had something that would pass, or she would tell him eventually—so he brushed it off and turned back to his chalkboard, finishing off his equation. "Tell me: did the one that wandered in here the other day looking for maths help do well on her exam?"

"Lizzie? Yeah; actually, she scored perfect marks. You didn't teach her _too much_ did you?"

"No such thing as teaching a young girl too much maths, is there?"

"There is when the young girl suddenly goes from being the average student to tutoring kids two levels higher without any in-between instruction," she retorted, hands on her hips. "I thought you said no teaching the kids anything that would over-advance civilization."

"What can I say?" he shrugged. "She gave me those eyes—you know the ones."

"Uh-huh—the ones that Courtney gave you before you went about tagging Herculaneum."

In all honesty, the Doctor knew he was soft at the hearts and he wouldn't change that for anything.

* * *

It was a couple days later when he noticed it again, the cloud that was hovering over Miss Clara Oswald's mind. The trouble was getting stronger, mucking about with her thoughts so that he couldn't brush against them to gauge her mood. He never prodded—that would be a breach of privacy and trust—but he did have permission to graze his consciousness with hers and the fact that he couldn't was disturbing.

"Clara, you're too lost in thought, dear," he noted as she sat down at her desk. It was IKEA, she insisted, but from the 28th Century where you take the bits out of the box and it assembles itself. She took a stack of papers out and reached for her red marking pen that sat in a cup with all the others.

"I have a lot on my mind," she said. This was technically the truth, but there was obviously much more to that statement than she was letting on. "I'm going to have to get this done before we do anything; put it off for too long."

"Fair enough," he said. The Doctor walked over and looked over her shoulder. "That's today's date."

"Yeah, and I should have gotten it done during prep, so please leave me be."

He backed down and went over to the library to sulk. A few hours later she found him, asleep with a book on his face and sprawled out over the most comfortable couch. She plucked the book from him and set it down on the table before gingerly laying down atop him, pulling down the blanket from the back of the couch and snuggling into his soft jumper.

What she didn't know was that despite the open mouth and soft snores, the Doctor was very much awake. He grunted and wrapped his arms around her, just barely grazing his mind and hers. The extra time she had to sort through things had made little difference and she was still unreadable. If there was anyone in the entire universe he understood, including himself, it was Clara Oswald, and the fact that he couldn't was unsettling, indeed.

* * *

Parking the TARDIS in the busted water closet that served as his "office", the Doctor strutted out into one of the main corridors at Coal Hill School. It was Clara's prep hour and he wanted to talk to her in an environment in which she was comfortable, where she was the boss, to see what it was that had been bothering her. The murky miasma keeping her thoughts from him hadn't lifted, so it was up to him to get to the bottom of things.

"I'm telling you: we'd have a good time," a decidedly not-Clara voice said, despite coming from Clara's classroom. "You were more than willing to sleep around before…"

"I've never _slept around_ ," Clara replied. "That would imply that I'm lacking things like morals and decency, and while I am definitely not some prudish nun, I'm more than suited to mentor a few score teenagers every day… which is better than I can say about you right now." There was the scrape of her chair and some shuffling of papers. "Now, if you excuse me, I have some work to do… like I've had for the past _two weeks_."

Ah. Everything now made sense. Some pudding brain, emphasis on pudding, was making things difficult for her at work. The Doctor did not like the sound of him, and figured he would fake walking up as the man was walking out and would ask Clara what exactly she wanted to do to him. UNIT could always use a test monkey, since they've been barred against using actual monkeys, or maybe a space-jettison might be nice, or…

"Get off your high horse—you were with that specialty social worker Smith at the same time you were shagging what's-his-name. Who's to say you don't want a little side-action now too?"

The Doctor's hearts skipped a beat and his chest puffed out in anger before he turned the corner and stood in the doorway. He saw Clara standing there, looking disgusted at her coworker and shocked to see the Time Lord, while the tall, broad-shouldered coworker, stood smirking.

"Speak of the Devil," Coworker said. "Care to join in on the conversation?"

"Pink," the Doctor said.

"Excuse me?"

"His name was Danny Pink, and I would like if you _not_ infer that Miss Oswald did anything less than her best while with him and even at her worst she does not 'sleep around'," he hissed.

"Doctor…" Clara began. Without taking his fiery eyes off his enemy, he held a hand up to silence her.

"Is this why you haven't been yourself lately?"

"Yes, but…"

"…then clearly someone else needs to have a go." He put on his sonic sunglasses and stepped forward, approaching the two humans.

"Heh, you alright there, granddad?" Coworker snorted. "Need your prescription Google Glass to chew me out?"

"I don't need whatever it is you just said because I can guarantee that you are going to listen and listen _very carefully_ ," the Doctor said, voice low and quick and gravelly. He hit the button on the glasses and a readout flashed before him. "James Stoker, aged thirty-eight, wed at twenty-one, father at twenty-two, divorced by twenty-three; have worked in three different secondary schools since then, leaving a trail of broken hearts and single mothers behind him; has been treated for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and…" He sniffed, wrinkling his nose. "…syphilis. I wonder what Headmaster Coburn would say if I went into his office right now and told him that you're delinquent on five different child support accounts, including one with a _nineteen-year-old_ as the mother?"

Coworker took a step back, clearly ruffled. "What the fuck…?! You're talking nonsense!"

"Am I?" the Doctor asked. He took out his psychic paper and flipped the case open, showing it to Coworker.

"Scotland Yard?! What the… you can't prove it." He began to sweat, showing panic.

"Try me; this is a warning, Mister Stoker. Leave Miss Oswald alone and straighten up or we _will_ find you, which something tells me is the very _last_ thing you want."

Gauging his options, Coworker left the room in a huff, storming off down the hall to his own room. The Doctor then took off his sonic and pocketed the shades before turning towards his rather stunned Clara.

"You didn't have to do that," she said, eyes large in surprise. "I was just waiting for him to give up—he wasn't anything to worry about."

"On the contrary, I did have to step in," he insisted. "He wanted to hurt you, like he did those other women, and was likely willing to slander your name if you didn't bend to his will. If there's anything you don't do, it's readily bend to the will of others. Besides, he was willing to put P.E.'s memory to shame and it's not very fair to call a dead man names when he can't fight back."

"Never cross a Time Lord or those he cares about," she giggled. Clara hugged the Doctor, taking in his warm scent of bread, cinnamon, and chalkboard. He put his arms around her, retuning the hug with the utmost care, and bent down to kiss the top of her head before letting go and motioning towards the door.

"Hey, how about we take a spin around the galaxy? I can get you back before next period."

"Wait until after school and _then_ we'll talk," she replied, lightly punching him in the shoulder. He mimed being injured, making her laugh, and left the classroom in order to find something to improve while the hours until classes let out counted down. Maybe they could bop around the galaxy, but they'd have to make a stop at a police station first.


End file.
